


rise at dawn and wake my sluggish heart

by brynnmclean (ilfirin_estel)



Series: rise at dawn 'verse [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied Poe Dameron/Finn, Poe Dameron (briefly), Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-16 00:05:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5805568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilfirin_estel/pseuds/brynnmclean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Her body has stretched longer, thin with hunger and exhaustion, her skin rough with the scrape of metal, sand, and heat—but her hands still remember the last pattern her parents wove into her hair.  That small, bright hope curls warm inside her and carries her through another day.</i>
</p><p>Rey-centric snapshots before, during, and after Force Awakens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [necrotype](https://archiveofourown.org/users/necrotype/gifts).



> First off, thanks to my brother Lauren for being my beta and reminding me that this is not ALL about Luke, dial it back!! Also, thanks to my twin brother Colin for letting me ramble about my plans for the fic (and for agreeing to fact check my Star Wars lore because it's been awhile...). Thank you, also also, to my friends Aaron and Monica who yelled feelings at me after reading the Google doc.
> 
> The title is from Marika Hackman's song Let Me In, which gets stuck in my head all the time.
> 
> And finally, this fic is for Shay, who gave me Desert Children Feelings in the first place. This is still 100% your fault. <3

When Rey thinks of her family, she doesn’t see faces or hear voices, she just remembers impressions—the fleeting memory of safety, someone holding her, her ear pressed against the steady heartbeat of—of her mother? Her father? Someone who cradled her as she slept, gentle hands weaving through her hair, fingers and palms rough with callouses. She smells rain, the precious, rare gift of a rainstorm, lightning in the air following through with the promise of water.

She doesn’t think of them often, whoever they are, the absence hollowed out in her gut, an ache so steady and familiar that she doesn’t let herself focus on it. Loneliness turned to numb hunger pangs, so familiar it sunk into her bones. If a sandstorm stripped her down to the marrow, maybe a name would be there, maybe a face, a lullaby, but she won’t check. She spent so many years telling herself to wait, wait there in the desert, just wait for them to come back, they _must_ —she can’t let herself go.

She keeps her hair styled the same way, a child’s hope that after all these years, all these years measured in scratches across the inner walls of her AT-AT, she can still clutch close some sign of that old life she had and maybe, just maybe, she will still be remembered if her family returns. Her body has stretched longer, thin with hunger and exhaustion, her skin rough with the scrape of metal, sand, and heat—but her hands still remember the last pattern her parents wove into her hair. That small, bright hope curls warm inside her and carries her through another day.

-

The terror of leaving Jakku and all she has ever known is soon eclipsed by the freezing stab of adrenaline in her veins as she runs from an enemy determined to kill her and her friends— _friends,_ she has never really had friends before, but taking Finn’s hand in hers, BB-8 chattering at her in binary, Han Solo smiling while Chewbacca roars in pride and approval with her—these are things she doesn’t want to lose now that she has found them. And they are present and real in a way that the dream of her parents hasn’t felt in a long time.

When they are flying to Takodana, she is gently but firmly ushered out of the cockpit by Han— _you’re dead on your feet, kid, get some sleep—_ and she lays down, lets herself feel the weight of relief. In the moments before the hum of the Millennium Falcon lulls her to sleep, she wonders if these new friends could end up being the family she hoped for.

-

When they reach Takodana, Han offers her a job and a home in the Falcon and she wants it, wants to say yes so badly, every bone in her body screaming for it inside her. But when she opens her mouth to accept, the words that come out are the scared, old habit. She has to go back to the desert, to that damn AT-AT. 

She wears her hair the same way she always has. She can’t let herself go.

-

The worst thing about the Force vision she has in the bowels of Maz Kanata’s castle, the very worst of it is that voice in the dark, that echo of a memory she’d lost long ago: _stay here, I’ll come back for you, I’ll come back, sweetheart, I promise—_

She smells lightning before rain, but over it, overwhelming it, is searing flesh and the iron tang of blood.

She runs and she runs, but she can’t reach the loved ones she lost.

But something inside her unlocks, some part of her she hadn’t tapped into shifts and settles into place.

-

Maz told her to close her eyes and feel the light of the Force. _It’s always been there._

Rey closes her eyes, though she is sick-scared and each breath shuddering through her rattles like a gust of wind through scrap parts. She breathes deep and reaches out.

And suddenly, yes. Yes. It’s always been there.

In her mind’s eye, she sees the desert, but it doesn’t feel like Jakku. This is a different desert, one she has dreamt of over and over ever since she was small. The sand is familiar and gritty against her skin, but two suns light the horizon as they sink in the sky. She watches them leave her in the dream, twilight turning into the chill of evening, but she doesn’t shiver, she isn’t cold. She carries those suns in her heart and the feeling of someone beside her, someone who knows her and loves her, someone else who has seen those same strange suns set. When she uses the Force, she can feel the peace of that light. The light and the calm. A place out there she could call familiar, home.

It carries her through the day.

-

After— _after,_ she holds Finn’s hand while he sleeps. He has been put into a medically-induced coma, she’s told, so he can heal from his injuries, namely the scorching cut across his back from Kylo Ren’s lightsaber blade.

The healers tell her that he’s stable, that he will wake up when the time is right, but she doesn’t trust them, she can’t, the desperate fear of losing him—losing another _friend_ —clawing inside her throat until she can hardly breathe, let alone speak. She weaves her fingers through Finn’s and presses her cheek against the back of his hand. The warmth of his skin against her face—proof of life. She clings to that.

 _Please don’t leave me,_ she doesn’t say because her voice will break and she can’t let the storm come now. She’s spent too many years considering tears a waste of water. She shudders and curves her shoulders inward, closes her eyes and tries to find that place inside her, the Force’s calm, steady pulse.

She reaches out and feels something new, a thread of light that feels like Finn’s smile, his gentleness, his strength. She doesn’t know how long she sits there basking in the sense of that light, relief rushing through her, but when she comes back to herself, she can still feel him. An echo she can carry inside her, an awareness that he is alive, he is all right.

The pilot—Finn’s pilot, Poe Dameron—comes in a few moments later to find her laughing, tears streaming down her face and her shoulders shaking, but her mouth curves into a grin so fierce it almost hurts.

“It’s okay,” she tells him when he rushes over, his eyes gone wide and anxious. “It’s okay,” she babbles. “I can feel him. He’s okay.”

An uncertain smile flickers over Poe’s face. “Good,” he says, glancing at Finn and then back at her. She wipes at her face and tries to regain her composure by focusing on him, taking in the dark circles under his eyes, the anxious disarray of his hair, the weariness in the line of his shoulders.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’ve never seen medical stuff like this and I—” She won’t admit she was scared, she won’t do that. “I reached out and I _felt_ him and—” It catches in her throat, the joy. “He’s going to be okay.”

Poe studies her for a second, his expression clearing with understanding. He nods and bends down to pick up the blanket he dropped on the floor. “General Organa is like that. Aware of people in that way, I mean. We don’t talk about it much around the base, but everyone knows.” He huffs a laugh and runs a haphazard hand through his hair. “I was coming here to keep Finn company, actually, but I thought you’d be here—I, uh, brought this in case you were cold.” 

He gestures to the blanket, and she thinks— _kindness._ He is kind, like Finn is kind, both of them making sure she’s okay.

She lets go of Finn’s hand and goes to find another chair so Poe can sit down with her at Finn’s side.

The evening passes with both of them holding Finn’s hand together, one palm on either side.

-

She sleeps in the Falcon, curled up in one of the bunks with the blanket Poe gave her, and though the ship is powered down, it still feels like a live wire, potential energy humming all around her. She thinks sometimes she can feel Han’s presence—though maybe it’s only her memory of him here, his gruff voice and gentle hands pointing out where everything belongs.

This was his home and he wanted her to have a place in it, and she—she pulls Poe’s blanket tighter over her body and presses her forehead against the wall, thinks, _you came back for me only to leave forever, why would you do that—_

But that’s not right, she knows. Han didn’t ask to die. He only wanted what she’s always wanted—for his family to come home. 

-

When the General gives Rey the mission to go after Luke Skywalker, she says something strange. She takes Rey’s hands in hers, looks her straight in the eye, and says, “I think you’re the only one who can get my brother to come back.”

Rey doesn’t know why the General would think so, but it doesn’t matter. She has to try. 

Kylo Ren was right when he said she needs a teacher, but it’s not just about that. It’s about the grief in the General’s eyes. It’s about how Han walked out onto that bridge with the hope of bringing his son back, no matter how small a chance he had. 

Rey doesn’t know what her odds are, but she has to try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be at LEAST one more chapter. I wrote the next scene (Luke is in it!) and it got to be long enough that it seemed silly to put it with these other shorter bits.
> 
> I have this feeling I'm going to keep going after that, too. I just have a lot of feelings about Luke and Rey! 
> 
> A quick note: I haven't actually seen the film more than once and I haven't finished reading the novelization yet. The voice in the novelization calling Rey sweetheart in her Force vision was something that really struck me when I heard about it, though, so I included it.


	2. Chapter 2

The moment Rey steps off the Falcon and onto the island, she knows Luke Skywalker is there. She can’t say with confidence how she knows—she still understands so little of the Force—but something in her settles. 

She climbs each step and it is a path laid out for her, and though she’s still shivering and scared, there is a calm place, a rightness she can feel if she just lets herself follow it. This is where she is supposed to be.

Even so, she almost doesn’t expect to see him at the top. The part of her that grew up on stories told over broken machinery to pass the time, fantastical tales of the Last Jedi saving the galaxy—that part of her still thinks, _how can he be real?_ Even after everything she’s seen, everything she’s _done,_ how she’s felt the Force flowing through her, guiding her even now… Luke Skywalker still feels like a legend. She reaches the top of the cliffs and the sheer fact that there is a person standing there takes her breath away.

She is struck by the sight of him, pinned in place by his presence and how the Force opens up and touches everything, wave upon wave of tranquility broken by—her. Her arrival is like the clanging of a bell, shattering through silence.

When Luke Skywalker turns to face her, he doesn’t speak for a long time, merely stares at her with bright eyes, blue like a cloudless sky. She doesn’t know what to do except stand before him with his lightsaber in her hand, her throat crowded with too many words for her to make any sense.

They stand there surrounded by so much water—she has never seen so much water—but the desert is in his voice, the rattle and scrape of sand in a storm, the cracked drought of years without rain.

“You look like your father,” he tells her, and she feels somehow how much it costs him, the weight of each word heavy in the air. They hit her like stones.

“You knew my father?” she blurts out when what she really wants to know is, _who is he, where is he, do you know?_

Luke’s face does something strange, his mouth twisting like an attempt at a smile, but grief buries any light. She watches his throat move when he swallows, his breath shuddering visibly through him. He presses his hand to his chest, and her heart aches with the echo of his. “They killed him. I felt—all of them—”

His voice breaks and the wind over the cliffs rushes in. She can hear the crash of the ocean against the rocks and the crying of birds and her own heart racing. Luke shrugs his cloak off as he steps away from the edge and toward her. He sweeps it over her shoulders and takes her hand, the one not holding his lightsaber—and she had forgotten how cold she was, the chill biting through her jacket, but warmth emanates from Luke like a sun.

He ushers her down the steps and she follows, drawn to him, caught in his gravitational pull as he leads her to a dwelling built from the rocks. There are several domes built, she sees, countless stones piled into walls and stairs, grey against the green of the grass and blue of sea and sky. There isn’t much light inside the small building Luke takes her to until he starts a fire in the hearth at the center, and she sees that this must be his home—a modest little cave with places designated for sleeping, cooking, reading. She sits where he gestures for her to stay and watches him move about, making dinner for both of them in silence that feels familiar to her. He ignored her when she tried to offer him his lightsaber again, so she runs her fingers over its hilt and waits for him.

He’s been alone for a long time. She senses this and recognizes it in herself, the same careful distance of someone lost, someone who lost. She wants to say a thousand things, ask all of her questions at once, but she knows if she pushes too hard, he’ll retreat further into the familiar comfort of isolation.

She can read him somehow, instinctively. She wonders if it is because they have loneliness written deep into their bones. Or if the Force flowing so strongly here, now, through both of them is cracking him open for her and her endless curiosity to see.

She looks away. Luke’s cloak around her shoulders is too warm now with the crackling heat of the fire, so she shrugs it off and folds it carefully. Her gaze darts around the space, looking for where it might belong, but a desk with datapads and strange, multicolored cubes scattered across its surface draws her eye. Small tools, a few crystals that hum when her mind lights on them, a short stack of what looks like very thin cloth bound in leather… She climbs to her feet and drapes Luke’s cloak over the chair by the desk as an excuse to go investigate.

She sets the lightsaber down on a clear space and is just about to pick up one of the little cubes when Luke speaks.

“So much of our history has been destroyed,” he says, his voice still a rasp of disuse. She shies away from his desk, guilty at being caught. “It’s all right, you can look,” he reassures her as he carries plates and utensils to the hearth to cook their meal over the fire. “It’s your history, too.” 

She wonders at that, daring a question as she tentatively picks up a blue cube and studies the bronzed metal markings. “Was my father a Jedi?” 

She almost drops it when the wave of Luke’s emotions spills out and fills up the room, dark and clinging like oil slick. Before she can interpret anything, she feels him recoil, drawing it back where she won’t feel it. 

“Yes,” Luke tells her, just one word dragged out of him and cauterized.

She turns from the desk and he turns back to his cooking. There’s an acrid aftertaste in Rey’s mouth she can’t swallow down, a reminder that things are apparently more complicated than she’d originally thought. She resolves to keep her questions to herself for now.

The tight line of Luke’s shoulders softens as he cooks, and the quiet settles over them again. She sits back down at the hearth, leaving his lightsaber on the desk where it belongs.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to someone other than ghosts,” Luke finally says when he hands her a plate of food, small portions of freshly cooked meat and vegetables. She forces herself to eat slowly, savoring each bite. Food like this still feels like an indulgent feast to her scavenger stomach. “There are many things I need to tell you. Rey.”

She looks up, startled by the sound of her name, how carefully he says it though he avoids her eyes and—she never told him her name, she realizes with a start, she’d forgotten introductions in the face of him, a myth made flesh.

“You know me,” she manages, setting aside her plate, already scraped clean in spite of herself.

“I do,” he says, and she remembers what General Organa told her, that she’s the only one who can get him to come back. At the time, she’d thought the General had been referring to her Force sensitivity, that Luke would come back from self-imposed exile for a student, but now she wonders if it’s not more personal. “I did,” he amends, finally looking at her with that grief broken smile again. “I’ve missed so much of your life…”

“Some life,” she says, and bitterness—her own this time—fills her mouth like blood. “Scavenging in the desert alone, fighting for every drop of water and scrap of food, waiting for family that never comes…”

Luke flinches as if struck, shame emanating from him like heat off metal. “I am sorry.”

“What are _you_ sorry for?” she spits because it’s still in her mouth, fourteen years of anger and longing, and she can’t stop herself now. “ _They_ didn’t come back! My parents are the ones who left me on Jakku, even though he—” Her voice cracks as it hits her in full, what Luke said before. “He’s dead, my father is dead, even though he—” _I’ll come back, sweetheart—_ “He _promised,_ but he left and he’s _dead_ and my mother is probably dead, too—”

“You don’t—I’m not—” Luke cuts in, chest heaving and tears shining in his eyes. His mechanical hand rattles against his plate of barely touched food, and he makes a sound that’s a cross between a gasp, a laugh, and a sob. He picks up her empty plate and darts back into the kitchen area.

Rey tries to hold back the storm, but she can’t do more than curl her arms around her stomach and brace herself against the waves of it. She closes her eyes and tries to reach out for the Force, tries to find the light and the calm of it, but she can’t. She is five years old and retching useless, wasteful tears because she’s lost.

It’s not just her family, it’s everything. Everything that happened after she rescued BB-8 from Teedo. Everything after— _after._

“Han is dead, too,” she chokes out, and from far away, she feels more than hears Luke say, _I know,_ and she can’t hold the pure light of the Force in herself, but suddenly, tentatively, she feels Luke reach for her.

She clutches at the thread he offers and he is there. 

Her sense of him unfolds, opening up in a rush of emotion and memory, too many things for her to catch except in brief snatches. Grief, fear, relief, _safe_ —two suns rising over a desert, home just at his back—waves crashing against cliffs and ocean stretched in all directions, wide and lonely. But still the memory of comfort, arms around him and a smile pressed against his shoulder. A man with brown eyes and an easy laugh carrying a dark-haired child up on his shoulders. Han and the General— _Leia_ —both younger, happier, engaged in some heated debate, but when they look over, both of them smile—family. But _gone_ —the last breath of a dying man echoing, Death’s shadow clinging. Red lightsabers in darkness, cutting down so many people, _children_ screaming, and Rey can feel each and every light doused until there is nothing but black crowding her vision and she has to get out, everyone is dead and dying and she cannot save them, it is like the strongest storm she has ever faced, threatening to bury her deep in the earth, every death another weight—

Luke cuts the thread before it swallows them both, and she hears, _sorry, sorry,_ and the brave, wavering strains of a lullaby, a melody she half-remembers though she doesn’t know the language. She pulls inward, and she hears the sandstorm raging outside the walls, scouring against metal. But she is not alone, someone is holding her, someone will hold her and sing until the darkness passes.

Rey opens her eyes and sees Luke crouching in front of her, his hand outstretched to cup her cheek.

“I am sorry, Rey,” he says, very carefully grasping her shoulder instead. The open channel, the bond between them, fills with a sense of regret that knots in her stomach. _I was weak,_ so soft Rey is sure she wasn’t meant to hear. _Death all around and I cut everything out, I ran, and you—_ “I am sorry for all the years you were alone.” _I didn’t know._

“I’ve come to bring you back,” she says, her voice small, still shaky. A child’s hope. It pours into the bond when she takes his other hand, cool metal beneath her fingertips. _Please come back._

A memory spills from her: General Organa’s face, the flash of hope in her eyes when the map had been completed, the longing in her voice when she’d whispered her brother’s name. 

Luke closes his eyes, his shoulders slumping when he breathes out, slow and heavy. “Leia…”

“She asked me to come,” Rey says, feeling his heart breaking before her awareness of him becomes clouded again—still present, but with some distance. He pulls back physically, too, letting go of her shoulder and sitting down. She doesn’t let go of his other hand.

Luke makes a sound that is something like a laugh. “Of course Leia sent you. I wouldn’t’ve believed anyone who told me you were alive. I was so sure…”

She squeezes his hand, though there’s no give in the metal. Probably limited feeling, too. But he smiles at her and, for the first time, there are traces of happiness in his weary face.

“Leia didn’t send me,” she says, though it isn’t technically true. She swipes impatiently at the tears streaked across her face. “I didn’t just come for the General. I came because I want—” She hasn’t actually said it aloud before, but the rightness fills her with confidence. His lightsaber is back in her hand before she even realizes she’s reached out and called it back to her. She holds it out to him again. “I want you to train me.”

Luke very gently pulls his hand out of her grasp, his expression going blank before he rises and turns away. “I know.” He sighs and busies himself with putting more wood into the fire in the hearth. “Your grasp of the Force is already very strong. But I don’t know if I can train another student.”

“But I’ve learned so much already,” she protests. Luke laughs, sharp and ragged, startling her. She climbs to her feet and pushes forward with the Force, trying to show him her certainty. “I want to know more. I’m not afraid.”

“I am.” He doesn’t turn back, his face half lit by the fire, but he yields to her in the bond, letting her feel the searing, electric burn of his fear for a heart-stopping moment. He shakes his head. “Every student I had is either dead or turned to the dark side. Please,” he says, cutting her off when she tries to speak. “Please, Rey. Let me consider it. Give me time.”

“How _much_ time?” she asks, can’t help herself. 

But Luke laughs again, softer now, rueful. It strikes a chord in her because there’s affection in it, an impossible fondness, for all that they’ve only just met. _Met again,_ she reminds herself because she can’t forget that he said he knew her once. She wonders what he sees when he looks at her, wonders if he could show her memories of herself, a little girl tagging at her father’s heels.

“I’m sorry I don’t remember you,” she tells him, tucking the lightsaber away in the pack she brought with her. If he won’t take it from her, she’ll hold on to it. He asked for time and she’ll give it, though she doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to wait. She feels like she has never been this hungry before, staring at years’ worth of rations and all of it just out of her reach. 

“You were young,” he says. If not for their connection through the Force, Rey would think it a simple matter of fact. But internally, there’s an old wound that’s been reopened. She feels him helplessly trying to stop it from bleeding through. 

“I would like to know who you are now,” Luke continues. He shifts and she feels his decision click into place. His sense of steadiness comes to her like solid ground after slipping through uneven sand. “I won’t keep you here. I will trade you a story for a story on our way back to the Resistance.”

It’s the dawn bursting inside her heart after so many cold nights alone, two suns rising across the horizon. She is stunned, blinded, but then she surprises them both by launching herself at him. 

He catches her and holds her close. He’s smaller than she expected—she can easily tuck her chin over his shoulder. He smells like rain in the desert. She wants to laugh, warm and full of wonder. “You’re coming home with me?”

“Yes, Rey,” he tells her, strong and certain in this. She can feel it. “I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **lauren:** IF YOU WANTED TO WRITE A FIC ABOUT LUKE U SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN A FIC ABOUT LUKE  
>  **me:** I knowwwwww
> 
> So this is going to be part of a series after all! I have Ideas and I am doing Research and everything!


End file.
